Free At Last. Again.

Recovering Alcoholic was fired from his job last week, and I lost interest in sleeping with him.  The two weren't related at all except for being unfortunately timed in the dark days of late November in Seattle.  I had been planning on transitioning the physical intimacy out of our relationship, and then he told me he lost his job.  Fuck.  I felt a sense of responsibility to a man who I specifically never wanted to be responsible for, an absurd obligation to have sex with him to make him happier.

I was busy and he was busy and our schedules didn't align until yesterday.  He texted me and said he wanted to spend the night.  I reluctantly agreed.  Then he sent the following text:

"Get me whiskey.  I am over it tonight."

"Um," I replied, "that's a joke, right?"

"Nope.  Too much.  I need a break.  Been smoking too.  Being sober doesn't help.  Same mistakes, more hurt.  Not worth it."

Any microspore of sexual desire I had left, any miniscule shred of wanting to be intimate with him completely dissipated, and I became afraid.  He was, for the first time since I'd known him, having a breakdown.

I called him immediately.  "Hey, I feel really bad and I want to be supportive, but you need to calm down.  I don't think that it's a good idea for you to come over."

"So we can't just hang out and have sex?"

"No.  You're not in your right state of mind.  I don't feel comfortable in this situation. I think we should meet in a public place...  Let's get tea."

He sighed, apologized, and agreed.

Let me say, first of all, that this man was given a shitty lot in life.  No one asks to be born into an abusive family, to have to relive a childhood of trauma in your mind daily and go to therapy just to try and function as a normal human being with a job and friendships and a sense of self-worth.  Considering the horrible upbringing he had, I think he's accomplished a lot.

I listened to him pour over his emotions for half an hour.  He slept with a coworker, he said, and he got attached to her.  He knew she was in an open relationship, but he stupidly thought it would develop into something more.  She called it off, wrote "we're just not physically compatible" in an email, and he became distracted at work, wasn't doing his job, and got fired.

"I'm not good at anything.  I should just move back to the Midwest and drink all day and have shitty sex with a woman I don't love and have kids that I don't care about and beat my wife...  Everyone hates me."

And this, blog readers who work outside of medicine or mental health, is a classic example of borderline personality disorder.

"I want to be clear," I said, "I don't hate you.  I want to be your friend, and I want to be supportive, but this relationship is going to change.  We shouldn't be having sex."

"Yeah, that's fine" he replied.  "I'm so fucked up with sex, I shouldn't be having sex either."

Great!  Everyone was in agreement.

I continued, "I'll be around if you need someone to talk to, but it won't be as much as before.  I'm going to need a lot more space."

He said he got it.

I officially ended the relationship I was never in.
 

An Outside Assessment of the Situation

My friend who is single and equally frustrated with dating in Seattle lured me out to Ballard last night with the promise of hanging out with two men who she recently met and described as "fun."  I trust her judgment, and fun sounded better than doing laundry by myself on a Saturday.

They were physicians, and it showed.  We were in the company of the only two men in the Kangaroo and Kiwi who weren't wearing flannel shirts.  Have you ever met a doctor who wears flannel?  Exactly.  They paid for our drinks and cover charge at a nearby club, and I didn't argue because it was one of the few times I have been out with men who make more money than I do.  I usually fight to make things financially equal along gender lines, but when a man makes more than $200,000 I forgo my feminism for socialism.  A wealthy man spending money on me promotes income equality, I rationalize.  It's Marxism for dating.

My friend had great chemistry with Man #1, and Man #2 and I had a pleasant time with absolutely no romantic connection.  After midnight, Man #2 received a text message from Man #1 requesting some time alone with my friend.  We laughed and launched into our own conversation about dating.

"You know what your problem is?" he asked.  "You're dating in the wrong city."

No fucking shit.

"I can tell just by meeting you that the tech guys aren't your thing."

I found it odd how I didn't know this man at all, yet he was spot on in his appraisal of me.

"Don't move to Portland or San Francisco, it's the same thing.  Or L.A.- God you'd hate dating in L.A.!"

He thought for a moment.  "You know where you'd do well?  Brooklyn."

He was right, and I wanted to cry.

"But I love Seattle!  I want it to work here.  It has to!  I need the mountains!"

I spent ten years trying to get back to this city as an adult.  I've lived in Atlanta, Boston, Vietnam, Ghana, South Korea, Guatemala, and a town of 2000 people in central Washington.  In every city I made friends and adjusted, but in the back of my mind I knew that my home would forever be sandwiched in between Puget Sound and the Cascades.  I never doubted that I would succumb to my Northwest roots and return here to live.  Take away the alpine forests, and a part of me is missing.

"Yeah," he said.  "You're gonna have to give up the mountains.  You're gonna move to Brooklyn and find yourself meeting someone and staying there."

It was pointless to argue, I knew, but Oh My God do I want him to be wrong.




 

A Good Time

Yet this isn't a sex blog- it is a dating blog.  The two are easily confounded.  I wish that they would come together more often because sex when you are dating someone, when there is the hope of a relationship on the horizon, is great.  Sex for the sake of sex leaves me feeling a little lonely over the next week.  Depending on the circumstance, I either wonder what I did wrong for him not to contact me again or I feel like a slut for sleeping with someone I'm not that into.  Or a little bit of both.  The aftermath is never as fun as the process unless, of course, you are dating and you plan on doing it again.

So back to dating, which usually for me does not involve sex.  I went on three dates with the same man recently.  It was great!  He was awesome and we had a ton in common.  We did not have sex.  In fact, we didn't even kiss.  We met for a drink on date #1, went to a concert on date #2, and made dinner together on date #3, all for the purpose of getting to know each other to see if romance developed.

It didn't, but I'm okay with that because it was a good time (see blog title!).  He was interesting and I took away from our conversations some knowledge that I may use in the future.  If I run into him on the streets of Seattle I'll probably remember his name, and I'll say hi.  This is what I had thought dating would be like when I started several years ago.

Success!  It's all relative.

 

The Birthday Boy

If I know you off the internet and I see you this week, you will notice a bite mark on my chin.

"I think you'd like E___," my friend said.  "He's a little weird."

She had invited me to E___'s birthday party at a Capitol Hill bar, but I couldn't tell if I liked him because he was 100%, certifiably trashed.  He called me Sarah for the first thirty minutes of our conversation, and I patiently corrected him until he got it right.  We didn't have much of a coherent discourse, but I liked his body.  It was strong without being bulky; the hipster tattoo sleeve looked good on his arm.  We drunkenly flirted until he said "I really want to kiss you right now," and then we sealed the attraction. 

"I like your face.  You're pretty," he said.

"Is that all you like?"  The alcohol was kicking in full force.  "What about my tits?"

His eyes popped open.

The midnight hour of his 30th birthday was approaching and he said he wanted to spend it making out with me in his apartment.  He couldn't find his wallet, but a woman had just referenced her breasts and he had his priorities.  Four hours later, as we lay in bed sobering up, he would worry about where his wallet was.  At that moment it was an afterthought.

Then the bite happened, followed by bruises, culminating in fun, consensual, rough sex that I was shocked came from a website administrator in Seattle.  Time passed quickly and before knew it, it was 4 am.

"I'm gonna head home," I said.

"What?!?"  He looked at me like I was crazy.  "Why don't you spend the night?  I'm really enjoying this."

"I'm having a great time too, but I'm just not comfortable sleeping here.  And it's my policy.  I never want to wake up in the morning next to a strange guy and have him regret what happened the night before."

"That's a weird policy," he said.

In the back of my mind, I remembered the man I met in New York.  I had told him the same thing and he laughed.  "I think that's an excellent policy," he had assured me, "but it's 4 am and you're welcome to stay."

The hour was the same in the Seattle encounter.  I was willing to do the walk of shame.

I started to get dressed and he did too.  "What are you doing?," I wanted to know.

"It's a thing called chivalry.  I'm walking you to the door.  Maybe you need more men to do this for you."

It occurred to me, as I left his apartment, that a far more chivalrous move than putting on pants and walking down a staircase would have been to thank me for a good time and get my contact information, which he didn't ask for.  But I am able to take good sex for what it is, and I will leave him with the birthday gift of believing that the ultimate act of chivalry after sex is accompanying a woman to the door.

Three Months

I have been sleeping with Recovering Alcoholic for three months now- my longest running romance in the last 2.5 years- and we are not even dating.  In fact, ever since I told him on our third date that I didn't see a relationship developing, we have not met up anywhere outside of my apartment.  I would describe it as a "booty call +".  It is more than sex.  It is far less than a relationship.

I was having a bad day and found myself drinking alone at a bar doing a crossword puzzle.  I wanted company and although I wasn't in the mood to have sex, I sent him a text message asking him to meet.  I missed his familiarity.  I needed him to sit next to me, to let me rest my head on his shoulder.  He is kind and supportive, and while his personal life is messy, he has been respectful of limits and avoided bringing his baggage into our non-relationship.  At that moment, there was no one else who I wanted to be with.

He had other plans, he said.  I was disappointed.

We met up late that night, at an hour given by God for the sole purpose of booty calls.  He went through the usual motions- unbuttoned and unzipped, pushed a little here and nibbled a little there, but he could tell my crappy day weighed on me and my mind was elsewhere.

"You just want to be held, right?"

I nodded.

"That's okay, I can do that."

And he did.

 

The Man Who Made My Head Hurt

My friend and blog reader had a party last night and clued me in beforehand about a man she wanted me to meet:  "I think he's your type!  He's a social worker.  He does have a beard though..."

She knows me well.  I met him and he was, for the most part, a pretty good guess at someone I would be interested in, with the obvious turnoff of copious Seattle facial hair.  We spent a good chunk of the evening talking, and I soon placed him in the category of someone-I-would-go-on-a-date-with-and-possibly-sleep-with-but-wouldn't-consider-dating-long-term, which begs the question of why I would consider dating him at all.  I don't think I've figured out a satisfactory answer for that recurring query, although whatever the truth is involves at least 80% boredom and a healthy amount of desperation.

"You're single, right?", he asked.  "I mean, we've been talking for most of the night now."

Being single has become so integral to my identity that I can't imagine ever answering that question with a response besides an exhaustive "yes."

I told him I blogged about my experiences dating in Seattle, and he seemed intrigued.  "Can I get on your blog?"

"Well we'd have to go on a date first."

"Yeah, that's what I'm asking you."

Sweet!  I love being asked out on dates from men I meet in person.  Not only is it flattering, but on a higher level it gives me hope that we live in a world where people take chances and don't hide behind the safety net of a computer screen.  I will always, always say yes to a man who asks me out who I didn't meet online, even if I don't think I'm interested.  It may not be a love match, but it is likely to be a decent time, and I am on a mission to encourage the organic dating process in Seattle.

It was getting late and I excused myself from the conversation to say goodbye to some friends.  I returned to say I was heading home, and I asked him if he wanted to get my number.

He shook his head, "No."

HUH?!?!?!?

"I'm not really looking to date right now."

Clearly if he had been interested in me, he would have been looking to date.  That's the way romance works.  But for the love of a God that none of these Pacific Northwest atheist men believe in, if you don't want to go out with a woman, DON'T ASK HER OUT AND THEN FIVE MINUTES LATER TELL HER YOU DON'T WANT TO GO OUT WITH HER.  That is passive aggressiveness at its worst!  It involves being so passive about not wanting to date someone that you overcompensate by being aggressive and ask them out even though you're not interested!

Am I laughing, or am I crying?  Sometimes I can't tell. 

What Do Men Say After Sex?

Last night after having sex, Recovering Alcoholic gave me a compliment:

"Jesus you're great in bed... And you're very kind too."

I laughed out loud.  It was sweet and honest, spoken at a vulnerable moment.  Which got me thinking about the other things men have said to me in the post-coitus minutes.  Here are some winners:

 "R___, you are so hot. I can't get enough of your body.  You are so fucking hot!  But you're also SO FUCKING emotionally unavailable.  I just can't read you."

"Just out of curiosity, how would you describe the taste of my cum?"

"I'm sorry I'm so quiet."

"Can you give me a back massage?"

"Who does your taxes?"

"I want some pie."

"I'm sorry I'm not gonna cum.  I did a lot of coke."

And my all time favorite:

"I love you.  I mean, I love your pussy."